


Shelter

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tv-universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 10:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1384534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl's never had the words. So he just sits, feels the heat of Beth's leg against his, listens to her breathing. Still here. Still alive. Still with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> Post Season Four. Written for LJ's tv_universe community. (Written prior to the S4 finale. I have NO idea what's going to happen in the finale, so nothing here is a spoiler. That seems pretty obvious, but I figured I should point it out. :)
> 
> * * *

The rest stop is empty but for one scavenged sedan with a missing door and an abandoned wasps nest in the back seat. With the burning shell of Terminus a week behind them, it's as good a place to stop as any. Daryl helps to string the barricade while Rick huddles with Abraham, plotting the route to DC. 

There ain't no cure, ain't no way to fix what's happened. Daryl thinks Rick knows it, too. But one of the things Daryl's learned is that it's better to move forward than not to move at all, so he keeps his mouth shut. 

He's learned a lot of things. 

His gaze flicks to Beth, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees some distance from the flickering fire. Ain't been no songs around the campfire from the girl since they got back. She still smiles sometimes – when she's with the baby, mostly, or when Bob patiently coaxes one out of her – but there ain't been the same light in her eyes, neither.

Daryl steps back to shrug off his poncho, nods to Michonne to finish up. He bypasses the fire, crosses the cracked asphalt to reach Beth's side, to drape the blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes flick up to his as she tugs it over her bare arms, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. 

"Thanks," she says.

He could remind her that the nights are turning colder, that they can't afford anyone to come down sick on the road, but she already knows that. Besides, the shivers she's got don't come from the chill in the air. So Daryl just nods, sets his crossbow close enough to reach before sitting cross-legged at her side. It doesn't escape his notice that the campfire groupings tend to stay the same, night after night. Michonne ruffles a hand through Carl's hair as he watches the baby, never far from his side; Glenn and Maggie hold hands, listening intently to Rosita while Tara watches them, all big eyes and gangly limbs. Carol and Tyreese huddled together, sharing a single bowl of stew. Him and Beth.

Him and Beth.

Low voices carry across to him, murmured words of comfort or reassurance. Daryl's never had the words. So he just sits, feels the heat of Beth's leg against his, listens to her breathing. Still here. Still alive. Still with him.

"I can't get it out of my mind," Beth says, when the fire has dwindled to orange embers and Carol and Tyreese have left for first watch, when Carl is bedded down with Judith at his side and Glenn and Maggie are spooned together under a single ratty blanket. "I don't even have to close my eyes. I just have to… not be busy. And then I see it all happening again."

Daryl looks at her, but she's staring out past the camp, past the skeletal outline of the dilapidated concrete toilets and the broken down car. 

He hasn't asked what happened to her. Never will. He saw enough when they backtracked her trail to the cabin where she'd been held, ignoring the protests of Rick and Maggie by leaving the group, by striking out on their own in the wake of the fall of Terminus. He saw the set of her jaw and the stiffness of her spine when she told him she had to go back, and knew in a heartbeat that he'd follow. He saw the ropes, the stained and filthy mattress.

He doesn't have the words to make things better, to tell her it's going to be all right. So he just watches her profile in the moonlight. 

"I know I did the right thing. I had to make sure he'd… he'd never hurt anyone else. But I keep wondering what Daddy would think, if he'd understand or—" She shakes her head and turns to him, blue eyes wide. "Daryl, was it… a sin?"

He saw her blood staining the ropes where she rubbed herself raw getting free, saw the fresh bruises on her neck. The rage he'd felt was a white coil in his gut, and if he'd been alone he knows he would have killed the man slow, made him suffer. Instead he took him down with an arrow to the leg, stood back when Beth insisted on delivering the killing blow. She did it fast and she didn't cry, and he knew it would still kill something inside her even as he let her do it. 

Daryl never had any use for God even before the end of the damn world. On this he knows what to say. On this, he's sure. 

"Weren't no sin," he says. "Did the world a favour."

She lets out a breath then, scrubs at her cheeks. "I just wish I could make it go away."

His eyes flick involuntarily to the grubby bandages on her wrists, to the scar that he knows resides under one of them. He only looks up when she reaches out to touch his arm. 

"I'm not going to hurt myself, Daryl," she says. Her lips upturn in a small smile, and something eases in his heart at the sight of it. "Andrea told me something once. She said, 'the pain doesn't go away. You just make room for it.'"

"She was a smart woman."

"I wish I'd known her better," Beth says. She sighs then, swipes a hand through hair lit golden by the moonlight before straightening her spine. "I'll make room," she says resolutely. "There are still good people out there. I still believe that." 

Daryl's not sure he does. Even after Abraham pulled his shit out of the fire back at Terminus, he's not sure. But he just nods, and when Beth lifts the blanket he scuttles just a little bit closer, wraps it around them both. The brush of her arm against his sparks fireworks under his skin, the heat of her making him dizzy. He closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of her. Still here, still alive. Still with him. 

He fumbles slightly when he reaches for her hand beneath the blanket, breathless, wary. But her fingers entwine easily with his, and he feels lighter with every passing moment that he holds her palm in his.

For her, he'll try to believe. 

She puts her head on his shoulder, and they sit and watch the fire until the embers fade to ashes and only the stars light their way.


End file.
